


New Life

by Chanter



Series: These Are The Voyages [3]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies), Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Canadian spelling, Canon Character(s) of Color, Competence, Crew as Family, Crossovers and Fandom Fusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, F/F, Gen, Mears has a name, Mears has a story of her own, Mears is Canadian and proud, Star Trek: The Original Series spoilers, Star Trek: The Search For Spock spoilers, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country spoilers, Star Trek: The Voyage Home spoilers, Star Trek: Voyager spoilers, USS Excelsior, wizardly Manual functions, wizardry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-07 15:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15222632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chanter/pseuds/Chanter
Summary: Mears knows the back of her communicator's case, and the details of what it carries, by heart and sight unseen.Or, Yeoman Mears is a wizard, and Galileo wasn't the only chapter of her story.  It was just the first one.





	New Life

Mears's communicator's doubled as her Manual since the moment she took the Oath. No one was surprised by that assignation except Diana herself, and even her reaction, by her own admission when looking back, was fairly mild. Yes, sure, it seemed a little (mostly pleasantly) odd for a minute, in the space after the mission briefing and before the shuttle door closed - Dr. McCoy's Manual was a real paper hardcover book, after all, and Mr. Scott seemed to consult thin air as often as he did a tricorder scrolling with Speech characters - but then they hit Taurus II's atmosphere and the world went sideways over edge into a nightmare. 

After Galileo - after everything, after the suggestion of haze ghosting behind first Mr. Spock, then Lieutenant Boma, then, for the briefest of instants, Dr. McCoy, then the nearest of the planet's visible inhabitants as glimpsed through a half-open door, and then Spock again - after the second sort of power four of them threw at the engines in addition to the seven-way phaser drain and you can bet Breakthrough is good for a lot sometimes, after the decaying orbit and the mounting heat of looming reentry, after the transporter lock and the escape and something red-lit howling as it faded behind them, after the ringing sense of home-relief-cool air-home-fleet-oh thank God-home that the mere sight of her palmful of tenuous, trackable, sign of life to match lifesign connection kept giving her even days after the fact, she realized what the friendly Powers had known from the start. That her communicator wasn't just the best choice for a Manual for her. It was the only choice. 

On the device's speakerless reverse side glow six barely-embossed water droplets, white seagreen yellow ultramarine pink aqua, as the shorthand for six ever-ready spells. Those notations are visible as little more than a faint variation in the colouration of the communicator's case... unless you know what to look for. To this day, Admiral Nogura remains the only wizard not also acquainted with Mears as a crewmate to have deciphered both the droplets' existence and their general meaning in one glance. There's a reason he's the Planetary for Earth. 

The ever-readies have been tailored and tailor-made by Mears, her friends, and her crewmates, over a span of years. Five of the six stand on their own, as much as any spell ever stands on its own, but the third in the row bears a threefold mark of local authority, one-by-two, a hair's breadth beneath its low curve. It would take a viewscreen's magnification, a spell lens, or a genetic disposition toward uncommonly good eyesight to pick out the finer details of the treble clef in red and gold that's the original sanction of the work, and the same holds for the ship's wheel and lighthouse laid in tandem a whisker to its right as symbols of continued acknowledgement. Mears has nearly memorized all three of those friendly seals. 

Understanding of generalities is one thing. Mears knows the back of her communicator's case, and the details of what it carries, by heart and sight unseen. 

The white droplet, leftmost in the row and the first routine she ever kept for future use, is a basic light spell. It comes up looking like a floating, softball-sized globe of pale glow rather than anything harsher when it activates, and it does, unless specifically instructed not to do so, cast shadows where its emissions fall. That's good enough for most environments and better for potential stealth besides. You're distinctly unlikely to need a spotlight on a survey mission, especially if all you're doing is trying to watch your footing in the dark and not fall off a cliff, or something. 

The next, the seagreen one, is a lower to mid-strength shield spell constructed as a dome over the user rather than a flat plane, taking the idea of a forcefield bubble for out-of-breatheable-atmosphere work and modifying it for more general purposes. Similar ideas were already in the Manual; Mears just tweaked a variable or two to fit circumstances. 

This variation won't stop a shuttle, but it does work against falling rocks - she's tested that one twice, crude arrows - twice again, but in fairly rapid succession, and fortunately for everyone involved their heavily-becostumed landing party was far enough from local hostiles that bad aim was probably still a reasonable assumption when both shots missed and, so it happens, slung empties in a truly eye-searing shade of purple. 

Shoreleave on Delta IV, before you ask, and her perfectly socially acceptable happy glow had nothing whatsoever on the staggering drunk the biologist from the Carolina had going when he started flinging mixed insults and glassware at anyone and everyone in range. That time really *was* a miss, seeing as his singsong yell of 'Here, pussy cat who shouldn't get any [filthy and related expletive redacted] pussy!' made it pretty plain he was aiming for the marmalade Catian gentleman - civilian, a visiting geology professor and crystal formation specialist, a journeyman wizard in between active bright assignments, and a source of interesting conversation to boot - two seats away. But her quick-drop shield spell (and the Catian professor's, which stopped a fair few flying shards of its own) made it moot, and she wasn't about to correct the chorused assumptions of a pitiful pitching and/or rubbishy bowling arm that followed the bottle's smash on the flagstones. Mears envies that guy neither his hangover nor the dressing down he doubtless got after his superiors fished him out of the Deltan brig. What a jerk. 

The third, the yellow one, the officially-sanctioned one, is a tri-moded short range transport spell. The reasons behind its inclusion should be obvious for any wizard. They should be twice so if you know Mears in more than passing. 

Its first option is a fairly standard teleport, coordinates to be laid in at her own discretion. Its second is a downright brilliant idea of Rand's that most definitely went into the book under its author's name (don't even try to deny how amazing that spell is, Janice), a seek-and-deposit subroutine designed to pinpoint the nearest suitable, stable three square meters of land or water, using a kilometer distant from deployment coordinates as optimum range and accounting for listed biological sensitivities (no dropping into a swarm of tiny predators, a thicket of poison ferns or a downed tree, for instance), then relocate the user to the site. It's not perfect, see also sticky mud up to her ankles that one time for proof, but if you have to get out of the way of an avalanche, an angry moose or a speeding groundspeeder, you take what you can find. Mears sure does, anyway. 

The third setting, just like the second, went in with Rand's blessing and assistance, but also got both Mr. Scott and Lieutenant Uhura's discerning nods over a few especially fiddly naming characters before their shipboard Senior signed off on it officially. The terminus end of its default lets out in the transporter room of whichever ship Mears sets as home base. She can edit that default to another location, transporter room or not, whenever she likes, subject to local wizardly authority approval. 

She's done so twice, outside of temporary reroutes during trips back to visit family in Saint John's. One was after the loss of their poor lady, everything with the whales and the Bounty, and Enterprise A's commissioning. The other was after Captain Sulu and Commander Rand welcomed her officially aboard Excelsior, but before they all dropped formality, hugged in several combinations, and started catching up in earnest as friends. 

If she's being entirely honest, the first change still aches. The second did too, but eased to the past pain of a healed scar with a speed that surprised even her, truly started easing the second first Sulu, then Rand okayed her transit spell's alteration (he with authorization as captain as well as dual ranking wizard, she with the other half of that bright diad status and after a quick but careful once-over of the diagram and its locational wording, just in case), and now the reality of her ship's setting makes Mears smile without even the idea of a flinch to dog it. Welcome home. 

The fourth and ultramarine blue droplet is a forcefield bubble, designed as much for out-of-gravity work as for waterwork and customizable for those and other situations as needed. She is, after all, both a more standard meteorologist and oceanographer - thank you, Starfleet, for heartily approving of cross-training! - and a weatherwork specialist in her Art. Whether or not any or all of those realities combine, one out of the three alone stands a decent chance of dropping her in the metaphorical drink somewhere or other on the regular, and even if she doesn't generally mind a wet uniform, she doesn't have gills, even partial otherskinning takes more energy than routine situations can spare, and twiddling a shapechange to account for chemical variables and gravitational forces between worlds is an afternoon's work in and of itself. A forcefield it is. 

The enchantingly femme, so her softly butch security officer Journeyman of a girlfriend says with a smile, pink fifth one is a light-bending and heat signature-dampening routine that's not quite all the way to full invisibility. This spell had centuries of prior knowledge in the Manual too, just as much as forcefields and shielding did. The only tweaks Mears has made to her iteration have to do with travel on worlds whose populations either have infrared spectrum visual capabilities or temperature sensitivity to a greater degree and/or range than many humanoids. Leaving the innocent gentlebeing wondering just why the patch of wall they're staring at is registering as standard to their eyestalks but warm to their antennae will never be in her plans if she can help it. Hence the attempt at heat containment. It's not meant for long-term use any more than the light-bending aspect of the cloak is, but it does work for short periods. It also leaves her with a case of prickly itchy twitchy everything for a quarter hour after use - thank God Tamura had mercy and didn't take any holovids of the related squirmy dance she once caught Mears doing! - but at least the Manual warned her of that likelihood before she field tested the spell for the first time! 

The rightmost so far, the aqua blue droplet, is a ten-second burst of stored raw power. Her own, in her colour, because if her predisposition didn't suggest it, Galileo did, and if Galileo didn't prove it, her cross-training made it obvious that more than anything, Lieutenant Diana Mears is cool water. 

It's a last ditch tap into a comparatively meager supply of energy, a final fallback before lifeprice, a desperation switch both freely given and deliberately wired, as it were, a reserve filled and kept just, so she says and means, in case it's ever needed. 

For life's sake, I-- 

Mears prays that 'needed' never becomes 'needed again', but if it does, she reasons, she'll be that much closer to ready.

**Author's Note:**

> Here I go with the minor character warm fuzzies again! I always liked Mears, not least because I would NOT have nearly that much grace under literal fire, and her 'It's getting hot...' line at the end of Galileo 7 has stuck with me for years. That's where her cross-training with an eye to marine biology and oceanography came from, as well as the specialty she has in the Art. She deserves a story, and so she gets one! And a promotion or two and a first name besides. <3 
> 
> Yes, Galileo was her Ordeal. No, this isn't the last I'm writing about her. Uh-oh? :)


End file.
